Front Row

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes discuss the new screen version of their smash hit musical, In the Heights, which celebrates the intertwined lives of Latino immigrants and their children in the Washington Heights neighbourhood of Manhattan, where both Miranda (who wrote the music) and Alegria Hudes (who wrote the script) grew up. The drama is focussed on Usnavi - the young owner of a cornershop or bodega, - where friends, relatives and community elders hang out, share their dreams and fears and fall in love.With a planned extension of Coronavirus restrictions announced this evening, many theatres and music venues are having to consider delaying opening or admitting full-capacity audiences. Many had been counting on opening on 21st June to stay afloat. Theatre producer Sonia Friedman and Mark Davyd, chief executive of the Music Venues Trust, discuss the repercussions of the extended restrictions.Samira talks to writer, actress and director Gerda Stevenson about her film of George Mackay Brown’s play The Storm Watchers made for the St Magnus International Festival in Orkney in celebration of Mackay Brown’s centenary. Described as a play for voices THE STORM WATCHERS was published in 1967 in his book of short stories A CALENDAR OF LOVE. The film was shot in the Orkneys under lock down featuring a cast of local almost entirely non professional actors who shot the interior scenes on their mobile phones.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hilary DunnMain image: Lin-Manuel Miranda

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage reflects on the experience of the pandemic in new BBC film, A Pandemic Poem: Where Did The World Go? Interspersed with interviews from people across the UK, the poem chronicles the pandemic from the first lockdown to the rollout of the vaccination programme. What one memory would you choose if you had to live it forever when you die? That’s the question posed in After Life, Jack Thorne and Bunny Christie’s new production at the National Theatre inspired by Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1998 film. Theatre critic Ava Wong Davies and the British Council’s Director of Film Briony Hanson review the play and consider wider depictions of the afterworld on stage and screen.Chaitanya Tamhane’s first feature film, Court, was selected to represent India in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars in 2015. His second feature film, The Disciple, which focuses on a musician trying to become an Indian classical music master, won three prizes at last year’s Venice Film Festival. With The Disciple now showing on Netflix, Chaitanya joins Front Row to discuss creating a new cinematic vision of India. Major publishing organisations and leading authors have joined forces to campaign against potential changes to copyright law, which they say would flood the UK with cheap foreign editions and threaten livelihoods. The Save our Books campaign, organised by the Publishers Association, the Society of Authors, the Association of Authors’ Agents and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, is in response to a new government consultation into the UK’s post-Brexit approach to copyright. Stephen Lotinga, CEO of the Publishers Association, joins us to discuss.Presenter Tom Sutcliffe Producer Jerome Weatherald

Noel Gallagher discusses his new album Back the Way We Came: Vol 1, a Greatest Hits compilation from a decade of his band High Flying Birds that he formed once Oasis broke up in 2011.In the week that the Football Association has appointed its first ever female chair, playwright Amanda Whittington talks to John Wilson about her play Atalanta Forever. Set in 1920s Huddersfield, it is inspired by the true story of a women’s football team so successful that The Football Association banned women from playing the beautiful game. Thousands thronged to watch women's football but the FA declared, 'The game...is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.' People are thronging to watch the play too: its first performance at the Piece Hall in Halifax was a sell-out. Mount Recyclemore has just been unveiled on the Cornish coast directly opposite the Carbis Bay Hotel where the G7 summit begins tomorrow. Echoing the carvings of American presidents at Mount Rushmore the heads of the 7 world leaders at the conference have been sculpted in discarded electronics, highlighting the growing problem of e-waste and its damage to the environment. John Wilson hears from Alex Wreckage, one of the artists behind the work, and Liam Howley of musicMagpie, the resale website that commissioned it.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson Studio Manager: Emma Harth

Danny Elfman has composed the score for over 100 films including Batman, Men in Black, Edward Scissorhands, as well as writing The Simpsons theme tune. Before he worked in film he was a rock musician in a band called Oingo Boingo, and when the movie industry went into lockdown he used the opportunity to return to his rock roots. He’s just released a double-album called Big Mess. Danny talks to Samira about both his musical lives.Billed as Gossip Girl meets Get Out, Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s debut novel, Ace of Spades, is a YA thriller that explores the effects of institutional racism. Set in an elite high school, it follows two black teenagers who are targeted by an anonymous texter spreading damaging rumours about them to the entire student body. Faridah joins us to discuss her book which landed her a one million dollar book deal.Public statuary has a reputation for mostly commemorating male subjects, but a newly unveiled statue of suffragette Emily Davison in Epsom is part of a trend to address that imbalance. But how difficult is it to get approval for new statues, who decides whether a subject is important enough and how do you start the process? We speak with two women, Sarah Dewing, who was instrumental in the Emily Davison statue, and Charlotte Cornell, who is beginning a campaign for a statue to Aphra Behn. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Oliver Jones Studio Engineer: Giles AspenMain image: Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé Image credit: Joy Olugboyega

The artist Ai Weiwei has just unveiled his seven-metre-tall Gilded Cage at Blenheim Palace, a sculpture which addresses the international migrant crisis. He discusses this, as well as the largest exhibition of his work ever staged, in Lisbon, and why he has now made Portugal his home.In the run-up to the awarding of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021, Front Row is talking to each of the shortlisted authors. This week it’s the turn of Claire Fuller for her novel Unsettled Ground which has won praise for its sensitivity and intelligence. It’s the story of twins in their 50s, living a life of rural isolation and poverty. Following the death of their mother, lies and secrets begin to emerge and their home comes under threat.Open Ground is a new visitor experience which enables people to hear recordings of the late Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, reading his own poems in the locations that inspired them. An accompanying app lets you learn more about the context of the poem. How successful will it be in keeping alive the Nobel Laureate’s poetry for a new generation? Freya McClements reports.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Hilary Dunn

Florian Zeller’s play The Father was hailed as a masterpiece. Zeller made his debut as a director with his film of it, and Sir Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for his performance as the patriarch sliding into dementia. Zeller tells Kirsty Lang how he was determined to make a film, rather a film version of a play, and how he makes the audience experience the disorientation of a man as his mind crumbles. The author and teacher Jeffrey Boakye has made a playlist with a difference – it’s A Musical History of Modern Black Britain in 28 Songs - but if that title runs too long for you, he talks to Kirsty about why he’s called his new book Musical Truth. And three years ago Ita O’Brien joined us on Front Row to talk about how intimacy co-ordinators were beginning to be used in film and television to ensure the comfort and wellbeing of actors during the shooting of sex scenes. Last night, Michaela Coel dedicated her Bafta win for I May Destroy You to Ita, who joins us now to talk about how the landscape has changed since she was last spoke on Front Row, and what progress has been made. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Julian May Studio Manager: Giles AspenMain image: Sir Anthony Hopkins in Florian Zeller's film The Father Image credit: courtesy Lionsgate Films

Actress and writer Joanna Scanlan - best known for her comedic roles in tv series such as The Thick of It, Getting On and No Offence - talks to Tom about her role as Mary Hussain an Islam convert in Aleem Khan’s moving debut feature After Love.Journalist Lee Trewhela discusses the close of Cornish theatre company, Kneehigh after more than 40 years. Novelist Chibundu Onuzo discusses her new novel Sankofa, about a woman who grew up in England with her white mother and knowing very little about her West African father. In middle age, after separating from her husband and with her own daughter all grown up, she finds herself alone and wondering who she really is. Her mother’s death leads her to find her father’s student diaries, chronicling his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. She discovers that he eventually became the president – some would say the dictator – of Bamana in West Africa. And he is still alive.We review Jimmy McGovern’s new 3 part drama for BBC 1 is set in a prison. “Time” is a taut emotional thriller where moral lines get blurred, starring Sean Bean and Stephen Graham as an inmate and a warder respectively. We're joined by crime writer Mark Billingham and novelist Louise Welsh, who also have some cultural recommendations for listeners to enjoy. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Oliver JonesMain image: Joanna Scanlan in After Love. Image credit: The Bureau/BFI

Sierra Leone’s best-known journalist, Sorious Samura, discusses his documentary, Sing, Freetown. After growing tired of hearing only negative stories from Africa, the film follows Sorious and playwright Charlie Haffner’s journey to create a play that shows the true Sierra Leone. The entire Liverpool Biennial, the UK’s largest festival of contemporary art, has now opened, almost a year after it was due to because of the pandemic. Art critic Louisa Buck gives her response to the 11th Biennial and what it has to offer.As the Scottish Government discusses reducing social distancing requirements, where does that leave this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe? Kirsty Lang talks to Shona McCarthy, the Fringe's Chief Executive, about the situation and options that might allow 50,000 performances of over 3,500 shows in over 300 venues – the figures for 2019 – to go on.As part of our series featuring the authors shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, there’s another chance to hear Susanna Clarke, best known for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, talk about her second novel, Piranesi. It’s set in the House, an endless sprawl of halls lined with statues, but it is falling apart, flooded by tides and populated at first by just the eponymous narrator and someone he knows only as The Other. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Jerome Weatherald

Es Devlin, who designed sets for Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch and Stormzy at the Britz, has created something more quietly contemplative as artistic director of the London Design Biennale, filling the courtyard of Somerset House in London with trees. She tells Elle Osili-Wood about how forests in literature are places of transformation and how she created her Forest for Change, with a clearing at its heart where we are invited to consider the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development.The artist Phoebe Boswell’s new exhibition Here at New Art Exchange in Nottingham features many life-size, detailed, figurative drawings, as well as large-scale video and animations which reflect her exploration of marginalisation, freedom and the idea of home. She discusses her work and how it echoes her own experience as a Kenyan-born British artist.On May 18 the DCMS amended guidance issued on the 17th May prohibiting non professional singers from meeting indoors in groups larger than 6 which effectively prohibited most planned choral activities for the 2.2 million singers in over 40,000 choirs across the country. Front Row hears from Richard Reeves, General Manager of the Royal Choral Society who staged the Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall last Sunday and Paul Parker, lawyer and part-time tenor about the ongoing issues the new guidance has raised.Presenter: Elle Osili-Wood Producer: Julian May Studio Manager: John BolandMain image: The Global Goals Pavilion: Forest for Change at the London Design Biennale Image credit: Ed Reeve

Briony Hanson joins Tom to review two extremely different films starring animals as their central characters. First Cow - directed by Kelly Reichardt - is set in Oregon in the 1820s, in which two protagonists use stolen milk to survive in a harsh environment. Gunda – executive-produced by Joaquin Phoenix - is a 90 minute black and white, which follows a sow with her litter, some cows and a one-legged cockerel in a fascinating but unsentimental look at animals and farming.Amy Trigg is currently making her debut as a playwright with her award-winning one-woman play, Reasons You Should(nt) Love Me, about a young woman with spina bifida coming to terms with life and love. She talks to Tom about creating the characters she wants to see on stage.Books journalist Neill Denny talks us through the ongoing bookselling dispute between Penguin Random House and Waterstones. He explains what it means for the industry and which party has most to lose.Composer and sound designer Dan Jones talks to Tom Sutcliffe about his epic mass participation sound composition Coventry Moves Together – the finale to a day of events marking Coventry’s year as UK City of Culture.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Hilary Dunn